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travel, art and photography

sketching

In between my day job, reading up on the German State of Bavaria for future travel plans and spending too much money on magazines that I don’t need (MARK is severely under appreciated I think) i’ve also been procrastinating when it comes to art projects. Inspired by my trip last October to Arches NP these quick sketches took the time I should have spent on finishing the Canyonlands projects I blogged about last week.

I haven’t quite decided on which of these will be the next stand alone piece I work on- knowing myself i’ll probably draw up a couple more sketches before I decide, but it was fun to get a feel for what I might do. Color palette is still up for grabs but I think I might stick with a more traditional feel this time around…maybe.

Sweater weather here in north Texas starts around the end of September/beginning of October, giving people like me an excuse to start wearing utterly unfashionable outerwear and drink hot tea in the middle of the day. My friends who live in the truly cold climates of Norway, Canada, England and even just the North Eastern states here in the US like to make fun of my excitement for chill winds, but I tell them that until they experience the please-just-shoot-me-already-devil’s-armpit that a Texas summer can be, they can just leave me and my sweaters in happy peace.

Long sleeves running past my hands, dancing a pencil around a page, steam curling upwards from any one of my coffee cups stashed around my desk, listening to odd playlists while singing along out of key… it’s a small paradise in a tiny stasis shell. I draw the mountains I long to see everyday, little birds from my childhood memories that flutter onto pages with ease, and surround myself with art books, comics, letters from penpals and at least 6 tabs open on my macbook.

Maybe out in the real world I have to pretend that I don’t daydream all the time, hold conversations that have nothing to do with different realities or the intricate beauty of prose, hold my limbs in peace and not deliriously shatter in all directions but …in this moment, graphite dust smeared up and down my hands, the light fading in the sky, headphones on and drowning out everything but a perfect rhythm, I am content and loveliness is caught in the cup of coffee that I bring to my lips.

The current mood in the air here in Northern Texas is one full of anticipation. The weather has finally started to get cooler, dropping from the triple digits into the reasonable 70’s most days. The feeling of wanting to escape, from the heat-the stress of school-impending 4th quarter craziness- whatever, has faded for now, replaced by a quiet contentment. I’ve taken to rolling around the hundreds of farm roads, short cuts and even literal dirt roads, exploring the small little-heard of towns around here now that I don’t have to worry about the car overheating, leaving me stuck some where only cows might find me.

Coffee, wanderlust, and sketching random little things has been my jam for the last 2 weeks, as well as just trying my best to keep positive and not let little clumps of stress get to me. I’ve finally figured out the direction I want my etsy shop to head into, and to the surprise of literally no one, its headed in the direction of mountains. So here I go, diving into topography maps, dipping into the tiny house movement some more, memorizing the shape of mountain ranges and spilling graphite all over my pages in the name of orogenesis.

September is halfway over, but I’m trying to think of it in the way of ” half full anyways” instead, besides which my eyes are shinning with the gleam of looking ahead instead of looking back and things seem capable of anything. The only real negative in sight is that I still have a backlog of photographs to go through stretching back to January and a yearning to get out and shoot more more more so someone needs to take my camera away from me for a little bit, and lock me in my studio for an uninterrupted day. Bring lots o’ coffee.